


The Small Life of Ianto Jones

by engagemythrusters



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M, Time Lord Ianto Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-05-12 17:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19233397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/pseuds/engagemythrusters
Summary: Ianto Jones believes himself to be a incredibly small part of the universe. The universe, however, disagrees.





	1. The Beginning

Ever since a relatively young age, Ianto Jones constantly feels small.

Not short. He’s a perfectly average height. He’s a little bit taller than that, actually; he’s taller than Tommy Evans, who’s eight, a year older than him. No, this is a different kind of small. Infinitesimal. Negligible. Trivial, nonessential, insignificant. Any other word to describe how irrelevant to the world he feels.

There’s a number of reasons why he feels that way.

At home, his sister doesn’t like him at all, preferring to spend time with her teenage friends instead of him. His mother doesn’t have any time for him, and always gives him odd looks when she thinks he isn’t looking. His father lets little ‘accidents’ happen to him and blames him for them.

At school, he’s got no friends, because everyone at school’s too afraid of a seven-year-old who knows and _understands_ words like ‘infinitesimal’ and ‘negligible’. His teachers praise him for those things, but they’re secretly afraid, too. He’s heard Ms. Lloyd talking to Mr. Morris about how he’s too smart for his age, and how it terrifies her when he stares at her with those ‘big blue eyes of his that take up too much of his face’ because it feels like he’ll ‘steal her mind and soul straight out of her! He knows too much!’ He tries to make his eyes smaller after that, but the other kids don’t stop calling him a freak, no matter if he squints or not.

So, really, Ianto feels small. Inconsequential, unimportant, immaterial.

The one thing that makes him feel better is the stars. He can’t see them very well from the garden, even when it’s really late at night. It’s the pollution of the lights from the city. He knows that, knows that he won’t see the stars, but he some nights, when it’s not cloudy, he’ll still chose to sit outside until his dad yells at him and drags him back inside.

It’s okay, though. Not the yelling and the dragging, because that part sucks, but the not seeing the stars. It makes him sad, of course, but he knows they’re still out there. Well, some of them aren’t; they’ve already burned up and died out in these past nearly fourteen billion years. But the light still reaches, even if he can’t see it now. Plus, he can just read about them instead in the books from the library. He’ll just have to wait until his mother feels like taking him. It might be a while. That’s fine, he can wait. He will always wait for the stars. They’ll be there.

* * *

 Ten years later, at seventeen, Ianto still feels so small. Trifling and minor.

He’s already out of university, because all his teachers skipped him ahead. He knows it’s because they wanted someone else to deal with his questions and not because he’s smart. He is smart, smarter than even some of the teachers, but the wish for him to be gone outweighs the wish for him to receive the proper education. He doesn’t mind. He’s gotten used to it.

The only thing that bugs him is that he’s still stuck in Cardiff. He’d gotten away for uni, but now he’s back; his dad’s sick and he can’t leave. He wishes he could. He hates this place. He had to turn down a job as an astrophysicist to come back. He’s a barista instead.

At least Rhiannon has gotten nicer, but it’s probably because he’s been away for a long time. His mum still doesn’t pay any attention, save for when she’s pursing her lips and frowning when she thinks his back is turned. His dad can’t do shit because it’ll probably kill the man.

Eventually, two and half years later, his dad does die. Rhiannon sobs on his shoulder like they have that kind of sibling relationship, and his mum hugs him close as if she had always done that when bad things happened. Ianto just feels nothing. That night he turns his eyes skyward and thinks about how nobody will yell and drag him, which is the closest he comes to having an emotional response to the ordeal. He still sees no stars, but it’s okay. He knows all about them now.

As soon as his dad’s done and gone a month, Ianto leaves. Rhiannon and his mum are torn between anger and their newfound familial pull, the need to both yell at him and beg him to stay. When he makes it very clear they can’t keep him either way, they help him pack.

He has no idea why, but his mother gives him an old shoebox to take with him. In it is an old, small blanket, a weird pocket watch, a silvery stick thing, and a plain key. He can practically feel his mother’s gaze on his neck as he surveys the contents of the box, her usual odd look amplified by a thousand. He asks her what it’s for, and she only shrugs and tells him it’s his.

The next day, he leaves for London.

* * *

 At Torchwood, there’s no reason to feel small, nugatory, or inconsiderable.

When he’d first gotten to London, he’d found that there wasn’t anything to be found for the type of work he wanted. It had discouraged him so much that he ended up working a couple different jobs that required absolutely none of his intelligence or skills. He continued to make coffee. Until Yvonne Hartman came along.

Now, he’s still not working a job with his particular interests, but that’s fine. He’s a researcher, albeit a junior one. Yvonne claims its only because he’s been there for such a short time, not because he’s any less smart than the other researchers. He really, really doesn’t mind, because as a Junior Researcher, he gets to see someone important every day.

Lisa Hallett.

Lisa Hallett, with the bright smile and the cheery attitude. Ianto falls in love with her the first moment he sees her, when she dazzles him with her first smile. It confuses him when she keeps continuing to smile. Nobody smiles at him like that, ever. But she does. Every morning, when she first comes in to work, she smiles at him. Every time she comes and collects a file, she smiles at him. It’s baffling. And wonderful. So very wonderful.

The first time she speaks to him, his heart goes racing insanely fast.

“You’re Ianto Jones, right?” Her voice sounds like honey.

“Um. Yeah. Yes,” he replies instantly. He mentally kicks himself for sounding like an idiot.

“Lisa Hallett,” she says, offering him her hand.

He stares at it for a moment. Is he supposed to kiss it? He should kiss it. Wait, no! Shake it. People shake hands, not kiss them. He quickly reaches out and shakes it, and she laughs, clear and bright. It sends a confusing wave of embarrassment and happiness through him. He likes making her laugh. But he also doesn’t like to be laughed at.

“I was wondering,” she says, “if you’d like to have a drink with me?”

He blinks at her, not entirely sure if she’s having him on. When she tilts her head slightly, clearly expecting an answer, he answers: “I-- I’d love to.”

Her beam widens. “Great! There’s a nice pub not too far from here. It’s not the best pub, but it’s… got character.”

“Oh. That’s, um, good.”

“How does tomorrow after work sound?”

“That sounds…” Ianto tries to think of a suitable word. For all of his intelligence, he’s got no idea what to say to Lisa Hallett. “…lovely. Thank you.”

“Perfect! I’ll see you then!”

She gives him a little wave as she goes, and Ianto’s chest feels like it’s about to explode.

The outing doesn’t go the way Ianto thinks it would. He half expects Lisa to bring some friends or talk about work, but she doesn’t. She spends most of the time talking to him about herself and asking a lot of questions about him in return. He doesn’t know how to answer most of them, but he tries his best. She laughs at every single one of his dumb jokes. They barely even touch their drinks the entire night.

Lisa smiles even more at him the following morning. Ianto ducks behind another person, afraid she’ll see his ridiculous grin.

They repeat the excursion thrice more in the next two weeks, each time feeling more and more wonderful than the last. Ianto finds himself opening up to her in ways he’d never had with anyone before. She made him feel carefree in those nights.

On the fourth night, she all but dares him to kiss her. It’s not his first kiss, but it’s his first good kiss. It’s like tasting a bit of heaven. He asks her out on a date, and she laughs at him and tells him those were dates, silly! But she agrees, and on Friday they head to an Italian restaurant, bonding over the slow service and shitty wine.

Yvonne promotes him after not too long. He’s her personal assistant, god knows why. He’d be much better off as a real Researcher. It’s fine. Really.

Even when that man comes in.

Captain Jack Harkness is… inexplicable. Unfathomable. Baffling, perplexing, abstruse.

Ianto meets him once in his time at Torchwood London and it’s enough to send his brain through the mill. Especially when his heart does something strange. It’s not the racing that he’s come to expect when he sees Lisa, it’s something totally different and much more worrying. It’s like his heart is doing a double beat, tapping out four staccato notes. It is, quite honestly, terrifying.

“You alright there?” Captain Jack Harkness asks when Ianto clutches at his chest. The other man breaks into a ten thousand-megawatt grin. “I mean, sure, you’re definitely _alright_ …”

“I’m fine,” Ianto says quickly, unsure of what to do with a flirting man in ‘40’s attire.

“Well, that’s wonderful, Mr.?”

“Jones. Ianto Jones, sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me. Not your boss. Although,” Captain Harkness says, miming thoughtfulness, “if you’re into that sort of thing…”

“Ms. Hartman is waiting for you,” Ianto replies coolly.

“Oh, ouch.” Captain Harkness pulls a mock wounded face. “See you around, Jones, Ianto Jones.”

“Goodbye, sir.”

The unexplainable man rounds the corner to Yvonne’s office, and Ianto thinks that’s the last of that. It’s not, because Captain Harkness’s head pops back around the corner and grins at him like a madman.

“By the way,” he says, “I like the suit.”

And with a salacious wink, he’s gone again, leaving Ianto with a heart beating double and racing fast. Almost as fast as when Lisa looks at him like that.

At that thought, Ianto shoves the enigmatic Captain Jack Harkness out his mind and goes to find Lisa. His girlfriend. Lisa, his girlfriend, that he loves very much.

Oh. That’s new.

The year turns, and somewhere along the line, Ianto asks her to move in with him. She grins and tells him yes, and they’ve only just started moving the boxes when that day happens.

That awful day, when Ianto steps over the mangled bodies of his friends and colleagues to find Lisa. His Lisa, who he finds, screaming in pain, half machine and half woman, begging for death.

Ianto’s whole world falls apart that day. He loses his job, his friends, and almost his girlfriend. Everything that brought him joy is gone. Lost forever. Except for Lisa, who he knows he can save, if he just uses that brain of his. All that knowledge has to be used for something, so why not this?

Frantically, he begins to draw up a plan to save Lisa. He is going to get her back if it was the last thing he does.

So, he packs his things (including that untouched old shoebox) and moves home to Wales, though he chooses Cardiff this time. He rents a flat, throws his things in it, and somehow manages to keep Lisa alive. Not entirely pain free, but safe, and that’s not too horrible, because soon she will be alright. Fixed.

Then he sets out to find Torchwood Three.

* * *

 It’s not easy for him to get a job. Captain Jack Harkness denies him twice before he lets Ianto in.

Ianto impresses him with wrangling a Weevil in what’s practically rent-boy attire and compliments the man’s coat. He’s rejected.

Ianto makes coffee for him, perfected and refined by all those years working as a barista. He’s dressed a bit more naturally now, but it’s still not enough for the captain. He sends Ianto away again with the remark ‘not my problem.’

It’s not until he remembers that Captain Harkness liked his suit that he gets the job. Or maybe it’s because he caught a pterodactyl. Or perhaps because the two rolled about the floor like some cheesy romance film. In any case, he gets the job, and it feels a bit like his soul is being torn to shreds.

Torchwood Three, he quickly learns, is nothing at all like Torchwood One, and there’s many reasons why. He was happy in London, he had friends in London, he wasn’t small in London. Plus, London was structured and worked well. Here, none of those things apply.

For once in his life, it doesn’t matter that he’s small, though. It’s actually a requirement here. He’s got to sit back and play the pretty, dumb receptionist so they don’t get suspicious. While Lisa can be credited for his transition from constantly awkward to smooth and collected, so can Torchwood Three. The expectations shape him into something new. Something almost mysterious. His suit used to simply be standard dress back in London, but now it’s his suit of armour (Lisa laughs at the pun).

Anyway, it’s not hard to say that he hates it here. He hates the cleaning, he hates the ignorance of the team, he hates that Lisa’s in pain here. Cardiff is as awful as ever. He’s just about ready to write off Wales altogether. What kind of a Welshman does that make him? Probably a very bad one. At least he still roots for the right team during football.

But Captain Jack Harkness…

Ianto still does not understand him. Not one bit. He’s impenetrable, bewildering, and mystifying.

His heat continues to do that quadruple rhythm at times. He has Dr. Owen Harper check it out, but the surly man finds nothing and grouses to Ianto about wasting his time.

Also, Jack not only dresses like he’s in the ‘40’s, but he lives like it, talks like it, acts like it. But then there’s that comment about the fifty first century. It’s damn confusing, just like the rest of Jack’s life. The man’s more mysterious than Ianto is, and Ianto makes it his job to be as mysterious as possible. It makes Ianto wonder exactly what Jack’s hiding that he’s that enigmatic.

Oh, and he flirts. A lot. With everything. Dogs, frogs, hogs, logs… okay, he flirts with absolutely none of those things, Ianto’s got no idea how he got on that train of thought. Point is, Jack shags left and right and flirts when he’s not doing that, especially with Ianto. When he remembers Ianto exists, that is.

The rest of the team is alright. Suzie’s bloody terrifying for reasons Ianto can’t explain, Owen’s a git, Toshiko is brilliant. He likes Tosh the best. He’d love to talk to her about any and all of her work sometime, when he’s not pretending that he’s dumber than a box of rocks and his only life goal is to clean. Then again, when that happens, Lisa will be better, and they’ll be off on their merry way.

Gwen replaces Suzie soon after. Jack makes a big deal to Owen and Tosh that she’s not a replacement, but she very clearly is. He forgets to give the same speech to Ianto, because other than the earlier flirting about suits and getting people where they need to go, Ianto’s managed to drop off his radar again. In fact, he’s so far from Jack’s radar that Jack never bothers to check to see if Ianto’s taken any tech home with him. Which he hasn’t. It’s all still in the Archives, with Lisa, but it’s a bit rude that Jack never thought for a second he’d have to confiscate something from Ianto. Ianto’s torn between wanting to be seen as a rebel and wanting to be the perfect little soldier.

At the end of the day, Ianto realizes he’s been thinking about the fact Jack doesn’t pay him attention far too much. Does he want Jack to pay attention to him? That sends him spiralling, and he has to spend the whole night sitting at Lisa’s feet to right himself.

Not that it matters for very long, anyway.

* * *

 Ianto’s not small now.

He’s empty.

Jack’s going to retcon him. Maybe kill him.

Whatever, it’s not like it matters.

Lisa’s gone.

* * *

He’s sitting, curled in small on his sofa, when Jack asks him is: “Who are you, really?”

Ianto blinks down at his hands. He remembers when they used to be covered in blood.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

“I’m Ianto Jones,” Ianto says dully, not looking up from his physically unbloodied hands.

“And who the hell is that?”

That’s enough to divert his attention from his pristine fingernails. He snaps his head up to look at Jack, who is looking down at him with an expression that’s either very, very angry, or very, very tired. Maybe both.

“Come on,” Jack says. “You practically said it yourself. We’ve got no idea who you are. _I’ve_ got no idea who you are.”

“And you’re interested now?” Ianto asks.

“Well, I’d like to know who my team members are. I’m not a completely useless leader.”

Ianto snorts, not because it’s funny, but because it feels appropriate. “It feels a little late for that, sir. Just retcon me and be done with it.”

“I’m not going to retcon you.”

Ianto freezes for a moment, then shrugs. “Fine, shoot me. Whatever works best for you.”

“I’m not shooting you, either,” Jack says, a little more harshly than Ianto thinks is necessary.

“Then what are you here for?” Ianto asks. “Sir.”

“I’m here,” Jack says, sounding close to seething, “because you hid from us, from me. And I’m supposed to trust you after that?”

“Don’t trust me, then,” Ianto says. He’s starting to lose interest in this conversation. Either way, it’s still going to end in a bullet or retcon.

Jack doesn’t reply. Ianto takes the moment of silence to close his eyes and melt away into the oblivion. That doesn’t get to happen.

“What’s this?” Jack asks.

Ianto stifles a sigh and opens his eyes again. Jack’s standing at his counter, fiddling with something laying on a towel. Ianto’s torn between telling the truth or spouting off nonsense to save his hide.

The truth is, it’s the silver device from the old shoebox. Ianto started taking it apart two days ago when he got antsy during his ‘suspension.’ He was planning to put it back together, but he never made the time.

But telling Jack that will wind him in more trouble than he’s in now, because the plans he’s using to put them back together are, well, illegal. He found them one night while secretly digging through Tosh’s computer. Those plans landed Tosh in a UNIT prison, for some unidentified reason. Ianto has no idea why, because this ‘sonic’ device doesn’t seem that dastardly or wicked, and the plans are incomplete anyway. Ianto threw them out yesterday when he learned that, and now he’s got to put it back together by memory.

So, Ianto settles for a bit of half-truth.

“Just a bit of electronics I’m trying to put together. For fun.”

“Didn’t know you were into tinkering,” Jack says, holding a long silver piece of metal up to the light. He sets it back down on the towel and holds Ianto in a hard gaze. “Then again, how could I?”

Ianto only stares back, listening to that odd _dudududum_ of his fucked-up heart.

“What are these?” Jack asks as he moves onto the old shoebox.

“Mine,” Ianto says, because that’s all he knows about them.

Jack picks up each item and inspects them carefully. The blanket he manages to smile wryly at, holding it up for Ianto to see. Ianto shrugs, and Jack shrugs back, setting it aside. He surveys the key with mild interest, as if remembering something. Ianto’s got no idea why; it’s just a plain old key. The pocket watch Jack takes in intently, flipping it about every which way. When he looks at the back, at the strange patterns of circles within circles, he frowns. He stares at it for a moment longer, then moves it aside, turning back to Ianto.

“I don’t want to retcon you. I don’t want to shoot you,” he says, in a voice that’s so soft Ianto can hardly believe it’s coming from Captain Jack Harkness. “I want you on my team, Ianto. I… I _need_ you on my team.”

He’s not entirely sure, but Ianto thinks that small confession might be what makes him stay after the whole ordeal with Jasmine three weeks later. It might be what lets him take the glass of scotch out of Jack’s hand. It might be what roots him in place as Jack leans in and kisses him, making his heart scream out its pounding quatrain. It’s so wonderful. And so wrong.

Ianto pushes Jack off him, his fingers instinctively reaching to touch his own lips. “What was that?”

“Told you,” Jack says, clearly tipsy. “Need you on my team.”

Some dark, twisted part of Ianto agrees that he needs to be on the team, too. He needs to be with Jack, even if it makes his heart go mad and his brain spin round. But he’s not going to acknowledge that, not so soon after Lisa. It feels like betraying her.

“It was Lisa,” Ianto says, knowing the vindicated feeling he gets is wrong, yet going with the lie anyway.

Jack gives him an imperceptible look as Gwen and Owen go gather firewood, and it makes Ianto feel worse instead of better.

“Didn’t mean it,” Ianto manages to tell him as Jack drives him home. The painkiller’s making it a bit hard to keep his head on straight.

“I know,” Jack says.

“I was just mad. At myself.”

“I know. Get some sleep.”

“Can I? I dunno if I’ve got a concussion.”

“Owen says you’re fine,” Jack says. “Your head is, anyway.”

“Crusied ribs and bracked…” Ianto frowns. “Brusied cribs and…”

“A cracked rib and bruised, well, everything.”

“Yeah. That.”

If Jack says anything else during the ride, Ianto’s too drugged to remember. The next thing he knows is that Jack is helping him into his flat, and he’s pretty sure his clothes are coming off, and suddenly he’s in the shower. Then he fades out again and can’t remember anything until the next morning, when he wakes up to find Jack snoring in the chair in his bedroom.

And that, if anything, is what ultimately leads him to throwing a rather bad come-on at Jack. Over Suzie’s fucking corpse.

“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Jack murmurs between hot, messy kisses. “You’ve got the weirdest timing.”

“Shut up,” Ianto says.

* * *

 This new life at Torchwood is not small, but it’s not _not_ small either. He’s not puny, but he’s not a giant. He still exists on the outskirts, still ignored and underutilized, but at least someone notices him in the shadows.

Jack gives him a purpose, even if it’s not much of one. He’s not sure what the purpose is, either, other than fulfilling Jack’s need for him to be ‘on his team’ or whatever. It’s still enough to keep him going from one day to the next without feeling empty or lonely. Or insignificant, meaningless, slight.

But even with sleeping with Jack on an almost regular basis, the man still confuses him. Ianto’s heart nearly double-beats out of his chest every single time, and he gets a sense of feeling so right and so wrong at the same time. It’s so puzzling that Ianto almost calls it off once or twice, because it’s messing with his head just that much.

The time Jack comes back to the Hub, smelling like putrid fumes and without the car Ianto sent him to retrieve, Ianto can’t help but feel that Jack’s hiding something big. Big enough to cause him to lie and tell Ianto that he’s fine, it’s just that John Ellis is dead, that’s all. Ianto doesn’t need to use any of his damning intellect to know that is not the case. He holds Jack anyway that night, the first time they ever spend the whole night together (excluding the night after the Beacons).

“You should stay more often,” he thinks he hears Jack whisper before he drifts off.

Things stay confusing, but good like that for a short while after that. Owen gets cranky and Ianto’s sure Gwen’s retconned her boyfriend four times now, but that’s okay. Jack looks at him with that knowing grin and Tosh talks to him about her theories, so everything’s fine.

“Hang on,” Ianto says one day. “Time bubble?”

“Just an idea,” Tosh replies quickly. “Nothing concrete, merely thinking aloud.”

“No, no,” Ianto says. “That’s a great idea.”

“But entirely impossible, even with London’s data,” Tosh says with a small, condescending laugh.

Ianto only smiles at her, because Ianto knows time. He’s good at time. He’s the go-to stopwatch guy, after all.

“The two of you could take over the world one day and nobody would notice,” Jack says, joining them. His hand rests on Ianto’s shoulder in a way that practically screams ‘stay with me tonight.’ “What’re you working on?”

“Oh, just…” Tosh waves her hand noncommittally. “Stuff.”

“Ah, stuff,” Jack teases. “Let me know if I could join in on this _stuff_.”

None of it lasts long, though. The teasing, the flirting, the sleeping together. Once Jack and Tosh return from 1941, there’s nothing from Jack. They don’t even have a quick shag in the Archives anymore. At first, Ianto thinks it’s because he shot Owen and betrayed Jack’s trust again. He tries to fix it, but then Tosh tells him about the real Captain Jack Harkness two nights later, wine-drunk on her sofa, and Ianto stops bothering all together.

It’s not as if they would have had time for shagging, because the Rift starts spewing out things and people left and right. But there’s enough time for Ianto to miss it, to miss the way his heart thumps so right and wrong, to miss Jack.

He misses Jack even more when he dies, seemingly for good, never to make his heart waltz again, never to hold him into the long night. Never to do anything again. Ianto allows himself a brief moment of pure mourning.

But then it doesn’t matter that he mourns, because Jack is back, and he’s kissing Ianto in a way he’s never kissed Ianto before, with the passion of a thousand stars.

And then _that_ doesn’t matter, because Jack is just… gone.

* * *

 Ianto doesn’t have time to feel small or unimportant or miniscule in the next four months. He’s far too busy pretending to be a good field agent or doing all the paper work Jack should be handling.

The Rift isn’t happy with its sudden opening and closing, but the constant ebb and flow of what Tosh calls ‘Rift Gifts’ slows down after the first three months. By the time they’re nearing the end of the fourth, they actually have enough time to take that trip to the Himalayas. No one has got a clue why the new Prime Minister wants them to go there, but they’re all tired of the Rift and Cardiff, so they practically jump at the chance to escape them both.

In the Himalayas, something happens. Well, nothing happens, but also something happens. But apparently, Ianto is the only one to notice, because every time he tries to bring it up, Owen shuts him down, or Gwen sighs, or Tosh tries to suggest maybe he’s got a bit of vertigo. Ianto knows better, though.

Something has happened with time. And it feels oh-so wrong.

When they fly home, Ianto gets the strangest urge. He’s not sure what the urge is for, but it’s there, niggling in the back of his mind. He doesn’t understand it until he’s at home, holding the old shoebox in his hands. He digs through the blanket in a hurry, ignoring the sonic whatever-it-is and the key in favour of the odd pocket watch. He stares at it for a moment, the urge threatening to overwhelm him until he gives in and opens it.

Then he passes out.

He wakes up ten minutes and fifty-four point one two seven seconds later exactly, lying on the floor, still holding the pocket watch, and wondering why he can tell how much time has passed. And then he feels it.

Jack is nowhere to be found, yet his heart is doing that damn quadruple beat. It terrifies him when it doesn’t go away after seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds later. He puts a hand to his chest, then cries out in shock.

Two hearts. He’s got two fucking hearts.

It takes him two hours, thirty-seven minutes, thirty-three seconds to calm down. It’s fine. Owen has checked him out before, and he’d never heard a problem. Two hearts do seem strange, but he feels alright, save for the panic.

He takes the pocket watch in the next day to run scans, but neither he nor Tosh can find something wrong with it.

“What did you expect, anyway?” Tosh asks curiously.

“Dunno. Something alien,” Ianto says.

Tosh frowns at the watch, and then at him. “Can I ask why?”

Ianto shrugs and gives her a half-truth. He’s getting very good at those. “Remember how I said something weird happened in the Himalayas? When I got home, I had the strangest feeling about the watch. Just figured it’d be a good idea to see if it was something, I dunno, odd.”

“Right,” Tosh says.

“And now I know I’m being paranoid, so…” Ianto trails off in an offhand manner, which causes Tosh to smile and let go of the subject.

Ianto takes the watch home that night and stares at it for an hour and three seconds before putting it back in the shoebox and shoving the shoebox away.

One week, three days, two hours, six minutes, twenty seconds later, the blowfish is shot right in front of Ianto’s eyes, but it’s not by his gun.

Ianto whirls about, looking for the gunman, and then promptly turns back around again as a wave of god only knows what crashes over him, threatening to send him hurling. He drops his gun, puts his hands on his knees, and takes long, deep breaths until the nausea and dizziness subside.

“Ianto?” Jack asks.

Bracing himself, he peeks up at the hovering man. He nearly goes under the crashing darkness around him, but he forces himself to stay awake and stay looking at Jack.

Jack is… wrong, almost. It’s like there’s something missing, or too much of something. More than that, it’s almost as if time and space bends around him, swirling out of the way to avoid the absolute fact that is Captain Jack Harkness. Ianto wants to do much of the same, to dance out of reach and run away, never to see such a sight again. But he also wants to reach out and touch the void Jack casts, because it’s absolutely fascinating. Wonderous, incredible, terrific.

“Caught me by surprise,” Ianto murmurs. He’s not lying.

It takes all of the night for Ianto to become accustomed to whatever the hell Jack is. Half of the night, he’s distracted by the so-called ‘Captain John Hart,’ and the other half he’s trying to decipher what Jack meant by saying he came back for Ianto and wondering what the fuck he was thinking, agreeing to go on a date with Jack.

He doesn’t expect Jack to come home with him that night.

“Where’s that box?”

“What box?” Ianto asks, even though he already knows which box is in question.

“That ratty old box, with the blanket and the key.”

Ianto has no idea why he’s doing this, but he pulls out the shoebox, careful to use some sleight-of-hand to hide the sonic instrument. He’s not ready to get thrown into a UNIT prison.

Jack all but snatches the shoebox from his grasp and roots around until he finds the pocket watch. Ianto flinches when he drops the box to the floor, the key clattering on the kitchen tiles and the blanket spilling out. Jack flips the watch over and glares back and forth between the peculiar circle pattern and Ianto. Then he makes a great show of opening the pocket watch.

Seconds tick by (forty-seven and a half, to be exact), and Jack says and does nothing, only watching and waiting for something to occur, and all the while Ianto’s hearts are beating faster than they’ve ever beat before. Nothing happens, and Jack eventually lets out a long breath, tension visibly leaving his body.

“Thank god,” Jack breathes.

“Was something supposed to happen?” Ianto asks, curious and terrified of the answer.

“No,” Jack says, too quickly. “No, no. It did what it was supposed to. Where did you get this?” It sounds casual, but it’s clearly anything but.

“No idea,” Ianto says. “Had it all my life. Why?”

“I’ve just seen one like it, that’s all,” Jack says. He sets it down and gives Ianto another once-over.

“Oh. Okay.” His hearts are still racing, and he’s still feeling desperate, worried, and confused, but he can tell this is the end of the conversation.

“So,” Ianto says. “How was your… holiday?”

Jack gives a low laugh that suggests that wherever he went, it was nothing like a holiday. “Just glad I’m back.”

“Right.” Ianto stands there for thirteen and an eighth of a second. “Well. Time Agent?”

“In the past. Or future. Take your pick.”

“I see.”

Fourteen point two four seconds until they throw themselves at each other. Ianto hadn’t intended on doing that; he’d been planning to wait until the date or whatever, but Ianto missed Jack. Missed sex with Jack and Jack himself. Why should he deprive himself of something he’s wanted desperately for the past four months? He’s glad he doesn’t, because sex with Jack Harkness is now so wrong it hurts and so right it’s bliss, but above all, it’s unbelievable, splendid, beautiful.

Jack doesn’t notice the double heartbeat. He never does. Which is fine.

* * *

 

The world keeps turning (and much to Ianto’s surprise and chagrin, he can actually feel it doing so), but Ianto finds himself trapped in a limbo, feeling not small, not big. Not anything in between, because that would imply standard, average, normal. He is none of those things. No, if anything, he’s beyond the scale now, an outlier to himself and the world.

Then his mother dies.

Ianto asks Jack for a day off on the day of the funeral. Jack asks him why, but Ianto doesn’t say. He’s not sure why he doesn’t explain, but something deep down tells him it’s because Jack is a _good_ thing, and his family, his past, is a _bad_ thing. Not entirely logical, then again, his life isn’t exactly logical at the moment.

He should have seen it coming, in hindsight. Or maybe not, because he’d only ever seen that looks from his mother. He’d expected it to die along with his mother. But there it is, reservation and unease plastered over all his aunts, a few uncles, and even his sister. Every way he turns, there’s constantly at least one eye on him, watching him with careful regard. A few shared looks between the relatives always follow, as if they know something he doesn’t, and everyone talks to him with a tight tone, like if they say one wrong thing, he’ll turn into a giant demon and roast them alive. Or something.

That’s probably why instead of driving straight home, he stops at a pub and drinks himself to oblivion. Halfway through his third whatever-this-drink-is, he has a drunken revelation, and he finds the fastest taxi back to Cardiff.

Then he’s in the Hub, running a shit load of tests on himself in the autopsy room. Jack finds him down there as he stands over the pages of results, staring at them with a critical eye that’s very impaired by his drunken state.

“What are you doing?” Jack asks warily.

“’M ’n alien,” Ianto says as he waves the paper at him. “See?”

“Ianto, you’re drunk,” Jack says, disregarding the papers in his face. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“Mnalien,” Ianto slurs again.

That’s the last thing he remembers until the next morning, when he’s waking up in Jack’s camp bed with a headache that could murder at least twelve elephants. He jolts upwards when he realizes, without even looking at the clock, that it’s eight fifteen and he’s late for work.

Four minutes, seven seconds later, he’s emerging from Jack’s office, straightening yesterday’s tie and tugging his cuffs to make him look presentable. Gwen and Tosh turn their heads in sync towards him, expressions caught between amused, concerned, and intrigued. He utters a small coughing noise, making his way to the autopsy room with as much dignity as he can muster, feeling the eyes trained on his back the whole way.

Jack and Owen are yelling at each other down there.

“-- just pulling the worst prank possible, ruining my instruments and faking these results,” Owen snarls. “I mean, come on. Nobody’s results look like this!”

“Yes, they do,” Jack says, angry and determined.

Ianto coughs again, and their heads swivel up to him and stare. Ianto’s getting rather tired of that.

“Why don’t you come down here and let me prove Captain Dick-For-Brains wrong,” Owen says after an uncomfortable twenty-three point zero four two seconds.

Jack glares furiously at the doctor, but he says nothing. He continues to say nothing through the next half hour (or twelve seconds less than a half hour) as Owen runs all of the tests Ianto did last night.

Finally, Owen slaps down a stack of papers on the table. “Just like I said. Nothing wrong.”

Owen turns to scowl at Ianto. “Next time you get drunk, Tea Boy, stay the fuck away from my equipment.”

Then he stalks off, leaving Ianto with Jack, something Ianto very much does not want.

He turns to look at Jack, bracing himself as he sees Jack’s look.

“Of all the stunts you could have pulled,” Jack says, his tone dark and full of untapped hurt and rage that Ianto can practically feel, “you had to do this?”

Ianto considers his limited options. He could tell Jack the truth: that it wasn’t a prank. But that would mean having to prove yesterday’s results true, and then dealing with whatever consequences that has. That doesn’t seem to be particularly fun, because by the way Jack’s acting, it would seem that whatever type of alien that is, it’s not something Jack likes. At all. Or, he could just lie and agree it was a prank, and let Jack get mad at him for a bit until he realizes Ianto was drunk and very upset.

“Didn’t know what I was doing, really,” Ianto says quietly, admitting the truth, yet letting Jack accept the lie.

For the next three days, Ianto deals with Jack and his flurry of wide-ranging emotions, spanning from hurt to angry to troubled, not knowing why Ianto’s tests produced this sort of reaction from the Captain and knowing less about why the results looked like that in the first place, or why they didn’t show up that way the second time. But he faces the music, and it’s okay, really, because eventually Jack settles down on sympathy.

Things carry on like usual from there. Well, as usual as usual can be for Torchwood, which is not usual at all. They lose two days to retcon, and Ianto can feel the missing time like a gaping hole. Owen dies, then he un-dies, but at least they get to meet the lovely Martha Jones. Gwen gets married in a very Torchwood-y wedding, complete with big guns and alien blood.

Then Ianto betrays Jack to Gwen in the sake of keeping peace. Ianto has no idea what to expect, no idea what Jack has in store as a penalty. When Jack returns from Flat Holm and simply throws himself into Ianto’s arms and promptly forgives him, Ianto feels guiltier than ever. He thinks about the stopwatch and the test results and wants to tell Jack, because maybe this forgiving attitude will save Ianto. But then again, it could easily be erased. Jack could get cross and pile the lies on top of the betrayal and determine Ianto unworthy of, well, everything, and cast him out into the world, retconned into anonymity.

* * *

 Ianto doesn’t feel small. He feels nothing. Nix, zilch, nada.

He sometimes will close his eyes for a moment to open them and wind up in the morgue, standing next to door number 35. He stares at it, until each and every time Jack comes and drags him away from it.

“I miss her, too,” Jack says soothingly after the fifth time, guiding him back to the main part of the Hub as tears blind Ianto. “I miss them both.”

“I just want them back,” Ianto hears himself say.

He feels Gwen’s arms curl around him, and the three of them sit there and cry, the first time they’ve done so since Tosh’s video, and the last time they’ll ever do it again.

Jack spends more nights with Ianto than he doesn’t. Ianto doesn’t know the last time he spent the night alone. Well, he does, it was three weeks and two days ago, but that’s not the point. The point is, they’re a wreck without each other, slipping into nightmares and restlessness. In fact, that night three weeks and two days ago, Ianto woke up at four thirty-three and four seconds to the incessant pounding of Jack’s fist on his door. The two of them ate breakfast together, both refusing to comment on the state the other was in.

That’s why Ianto can never tell Jack about the two hearts and the stopwatch, because they need each other too much. Ianto can’t even bear to think about what would happen if Jack found out.

So, one night, after Ianto gets mauled by a Weevil, when Jack confesses love, Ianto can only say “don’t.” Jack looks hurt, even after Ianto presses a gentle kiss to his lips, but he seems like he thinks he understands. He doesn’t actually understand, and he can’t ever, but if whatever he thinks is better, more comprehensible, and less reviling than the truth, then Ianto can pretend that’s the real reason.

Anyway, sometime soon after that is when the Daleks take the Earth. Jack clings to Gwen and Ianto with fear (Ianto knows about Satellite Five, so he understands perfectly), and they think for a moment that they’ve lost Martha as well as, which crushes the three of them into a million pieces. Then the Doctor shows up.

“He’s not that young,” Ianto says, following a confusing comment from Gwen on how he’s a ‘bit of alright.’

Jack shoots him a curious glance, Gwen doesn’t amend her statement, and Ianto just plain doesn’t understand. The Doctor _doesn’t_ look young, can’t they see? Don’t they see all that time hanging about the man like a cloak?

It doesn’t matter for very long, though, because Jack goes, off to help his Doctor, and Gwen and Ianto have to try to keep alive as the Daleks descend upon them.

As he shoots that bloody machine gun, he can feel time warp around him. Bend and snap at his heels. It takes everything not to drop the gun and gasp. Tosh’s time bubble worked, then. He knew it would, from the moment she proposed it. It took him everything not to give her the answers right away, and he’s glad he never did; he’s so proud she achieved it on her own.

Jack takes forever to come home. He calls ahead to tell Gwen, whose mobile hasn’t broken upon the disastrous return of Earth to its rightful place in the sky, that he’s stuck in London and he’ll be back as soon as he talks to UNIT. That leaves Gwen and Ianto to do all of the liaising on behalf of Torchwood, and they spend thirteen hours, twelve minutes, four seconds split between answering calls and cleaning the Hub. This means that neither of them has slept in the past two days, which raises the tension to an unbearable amount, and eventually they break into a screaming match that ends in tears on Gwen’s part and an embarrassing amount of trembling on Ianto’s.

“Gwen?” Ianto says thirteen minutes exactly into the following silence.

“What?” Gwen sniffs, brushing the last of her tears off her cheeks.

“I…” He runs a shaky hand through his hair. “Promise you won’t… do anything harsh?”

“What is it, love?” Gwen asks. She looks a bit troubled.

“I think I’m an alien,” Ianto confesses.

Gwen gapes at him and says nothing for a minute and a second. Then she slowly nods and asks him why he thinks that, and in response, he tells her about the odd looks, the stopwatch, the weird time obsession he’s got going on, and the two hearts. Gwen gets out a stethoscope and listens to both sides of his chest.

When she pulls it out of her ears, she says nothing at first. Then: “I’d ask you if you were really Ianto Jones, but I don’t think I’m doubting that.”

“What if I’m not?” Ianto asks, his voice betraying some of his fear. “What if I got replaced after the Himalayas, or something?”

“Ianto, I’ve just spent the past thirty-six hours with you--”

“Thirty-five, twenty minutes, forty-seven seconds.”

“--and I can honestly say, you’re Ianto Jones.” She takes his hands in hers, smoothing out the remaining tremors. “Why haven’t I noticed before, though?”

“I don’t know,” Ianto says honestly. “Nobody has. Not even Jack.”

“Those tests with Owen…”

“They thought I was making some stupid joke.”

“Jack got so mad,” she recalls, nodding.

“That’s why you can’t tell him,” Ianto urges, pleads. “You can’t. Promise me you won’t. I’m afraid of what will happen if he does.”

“I won’t say a word,” she vows.

Gwen plays with his hands somewhat in the next bout of silence. Ianto doesn’t stop her; he’s used to people with a tactile nature by now. It’s nice, actually, and he realizes something.

“Gwen?” he says again.

“Yes?”

“I think…” He cuts off and looks away, gazing off at anything that isn’t her.

“What, sweetheart?”

“I think… I think you’re my best friend.”

Gwen blinks for a moment (two point two seconds), then laughs.

“What?” He knew he shouldn’t have said it.

“Was it really harder to admit I’m your friend than it was to admit being an alien?” Gwen manages to squeeze in between laughs.

He frowns, indignant. “You know I’m not good at talking about this kind of stuff.”

“Oh, Ianto,” she says when the laughs die down. Her grin eases into a kind smile and she pats his hand gently. “You’re my best friend, too.”

Then Jack shows up, flouncing through the cog doors and ruining the moment. But then he takes Ianto home and holds him into the early morning light, so that more than makes up for it.

* * *

 

The year trudges by, slow at some points, fast at others. Ianto works up the courage to tell Jack the truth exactly four times, but each and every time he gets close to saying it, he chickens out. Twice because Jack has just professed his love again (to which Ianto responds “you shouldn’t” and another “don’t”), once because an outrageously pissed-off Ogarnian attacks him mid-sentence, and once because he just plain couldn’t do it. It’s whatever. It’s fine.

* * *

 The summer of 2009 draws to a close, and it’s nearly enjoyable. Pleasant, even. Delightful, satisfying. Jack is wonderful (magnificent, amazing) and Gwen is reliable (trustworthy, dependable). He misses Tosh and Owen something dreadful, of course, but life is starting to look better. He doesn’t bother considering whether he’s small or not. He just is.

When September comes around, children start speaking in unison, clear and perfect English. Every single child. It’s absolutely bizarre, but Ianto’s not concerned about it, really. They’ve handled much worse. Jack and Ianto are in a bit of a rough spot at the moment, but it’s fine, because the world’s ending and Jack needs a child. He tries to fetch one of Rhiannon’s kids, but Rhiannon talks about personal things, like Jack, and watches him with that ever-suspicious eye, so Ianto leaves as soon as he can. Minus the SUV, which somehow got stolen.

Then things happen too fast. Gwen’s pregnant, Jack’s exploding, they’re on the run, Jack’s trapped in cement, they’re in hiding, Rhys has beans. They’re in the Thames House.

Ianto’s in Jack’s arms, dying.

“I love you,” Ianto says, because he’ll never get the chance to say it otherwise.

“Don’t,” Jack says.

Ianto wonders for exactly a fourth of a second what Jack had thought Ianto had meant when he himself had said that word. Then he pushes it aside, because that doesn’t matter now.

Then he dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone else is doing it, so why don't I?  
> Unedited as fuck.  
> Have a nice day! Thanks for reading!


	2. The Middle

Death isn’t small. Death is death. That’s the only way to describe it; there are no other words for it.

Death is death is death is death is death is death…

Until it’s not.

Until he’s screaming.

Until he’s aching and crying and thrashing out and being pulled back, over glass and hot coals and all manner of painful things.

Until he’s breathing in.

* * *

 There’s a moment when he is… not lucid, exactly, but aware. Conscious. He’s not screaming, or aching, or crying, or thrashing about. He’s just awake. Barely. Hardly. Scarcely.

A head moves into his wobbly range of blurred vision. He knows it.

“ _Martha_ ,” he gasps.

“Hello, Iant-- oh, he’s fading out again.”

* * *

He opens his eyes as he lets out a burp. Well. Not a burp, per se; it’s more like a deep, resounding exhale of a golden vapor.

And if that’s not a terrifying thing to wake up to, Ianto doesn’t know what is.

Taking a few moments, he reorients himself. He does a mental check of his body. It seems normal, barring horrifying sparkly gaseous discharge. When he’s satisfied by that, he takes in the external factors. He’s in a room. A big, white, hostpital-ish room. And he’s on a bed. A big, white, hospital-ish bed.

The door opens, and he jolts upwards.

“Martha?” Ianto asks in surprise as she walks in, holding a clipboard and dressed in a lab coat (a big, white, hospital-ish one).

She beams at him. “Finally awake, huh?”

“What are you doing here?” He frowns. “What am I doing here? Where is here? What’s going on?”

“That’s the most questions I’ve ever heard you ask,” she remarks, smile never once wavering. “How are you feeling?”

“I dunno. Pretty normal. That doesn’t explain what happened to-- shit.”

He swallows and blinks hard at her, suddenly very aware why he’s sitting here, in this big, white, hospital-ish nightmare.

“Caught on, did you?” Martha’s smile is kinder now.

“I died,” Ianto says. “I was _dead_!”

“And now you’re not,” she replies. She clicks open a pen and prepares to mark something on her clipboard. “Any double vision?”

“Why am I still alive?” Ianto asks, ignoring her.

“Well,” she says slowly, returning the pen to her coat pocket and frowning slightly, “you’ve regenerated.”

Regenerated. The only person he knows that can do anything close to that is…

“Like… Jack?”

“No, not like Jack,” Martha says.

“Then what like?” It wouldn’t be wrong to say he’s on the verge of panicking.

She seems puzzled, for whatever reason. “You don’t know?”

“What do you mean? Of course, I don’t know!” There it is. The panic.

Martha takes a calm breath. “Ianto, do you know what a Time Lord is?”

Ianto stares at her. For exactly twelve point three two seconds.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Ianto groans.

“Can I ask, by any chance, do you own a pocket watch? Big, old thing, funny-looking circles on the back?”

“Yes. What’s that got to do with this?”

“How long have you had it?”

“All my life, I suppose, hidden in my mum’s shoebox. Jack asked me about that, too. Does this have to do with your Doctor?”

“Kind of,” Martha says. “Did you ever open it?”

“Once,” Ianto says. “Only once.”

“When?”

“Look, I don’t see what this has to do with--”

“When, Ianto?” Martha repeats.

“Right after your missing year,” Ianto says.

Martha sucks in air, no doubt unhappy to be reminded of that. “And did you suddenly regain any memories?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

She frowns and writes something on her clipboard.

“Will you please tell me what’s going on?” Ianto pleads.

Martha gives him a wry smile. “Congratulations, Ianto. You’re a Time Lord!”

“So I’ve gathered. You sound like Owen.”

“ _You_ sound unamused.”

“It’s a bit much to take in, I suppose.”

“Quite right.”

Martha places a stethoscope in her ears and leans forward. She listens to the left side, and Ianto doesn’t think much of it. Then she moves to the right. She can probably hear that his hearts start to race.

“You hear them?” he asks, reaching for his chest as she removes the cold metal.

“Of course, I can hear them,” Martha says. “Why? Has no one else?”

“No. Well, Gwen did once I showed her, but nobody other than her.”

“Hm,” she says thoughtfully. “I’m not sure about that, but my guess is telepathy.”

“Excuse me?”

“Time Lords have low levels of telepathy,” she explains. “I’m assuming that if, on a subconscious level, you didn’t want anyone to find out, nobody would.”

“Oh,” Ianto says.

“Why didn’t you want that? I’m just curious,” she says quickly, holding up her hands.

“Jack was, well, jumpy when he got back. The first thing he did with me was go straight for the pocket watch and open it. I’m still not sure what that’s got to do with anything, but the look on his face…. And then one night I took tests on myself and he looked so furious when he thought I did it to make fun of him. I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t want to be whatever he thought I was. I didn’t want him to… lose his trust in me.”

“Oh,” Martha says sadly. She reaches out and takes one of his hands. “I’m sorry, Ianto.”

“What’ve you got to be sorry for?” Ianto mumbles, not expecting the tenderness.

“It’s got to be hard for Jack,” she says. “With the Doctor and the Master, Time Lords have got to be something awful for him. Not to say it was right of him to act the way he did, but it’s understandable.”

“The Master?” Ianto asks.

“He’s nobody,” she says, too swiftly. Then she takes a breath and tries again. “He’s _not_ nobody. I suppose if anyone’s got a right to hear about him, it’s you. I’m just not…”

“I get it,” Ianto says, putting two and two together. “You don’t have to say anything. If it’s what I think it is, then I don’t need to hear it. At least I know why Jack was the way he was, now.”

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“Don’t mention--wait, hang on.”

“What is it?” Martha asks, worried. “Are you in pain? Double vision?”

“Why do you keep asking that? No, I’m fine. I just remembered,” Ianto says, “Jack used to say his Doctor… changed.”

“Oooh.”

“Well?” Ianto asks, feeling no small amount of terror. “What do I look like? Please don’t say I’m ginger.”

Martha laughs. Ianto has no idea why she laughs, because this isn’t a hilarious situation. Unless…

“No, no,” she says quickly as his eyes go wide with horror. “You look fine.”

“And what does ‘fine’ look like?”

“Um.” She gives him a once over and then shrugs. “It kind of looks like you.”

“I know it looks like me, I’m just wondering what that new me…” He trails off and looks at his hands. “You mean I really look like _me_.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” He frowns. “Is it supposed to work like that?”

“Don’t ask me,” she says. “I’m not a Time Lord expert.”

“But you just--”

“I’m a doctor that happens to know a few things about Time Lords,” she interrupts, “not the other way around. I can pronounce you healthy and send you on your way, but I can’t say why or how you’re healthy, just that you are. Which, you know, is what I was sent here to do, so can you please let me do my job?”

“Alright.”

She does a few more seemingly standard tests and, indeed, pronounces him healthy and sends him on his way.

“Give my love to Gwen,” she says as she hugs him good-bye.

He makes for the door, but she stops him again.

“In case you do want a Time Lord expert…”

She writes something on her paper and tears it off, handing him the strip of numbers. It looks like a phone number.

“I’ll be giving him a call,” she tells him, proving his theory, “but I’m not sure if he’ll come right away, so if the two of us badger him nonstop, maybe he’ll speed himself up a bit.”

“Doesn’t he have a time machine?” Ianto asks.

“That doesn’t mean he uses it correctly,” she retorts.

He laughs and kisses her cheek as a final goodbye. Then he pushes out the door, to where a distraught Gwen Cooper is sitting on an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair, clutching her handbag like an old lady.

“Hey,” he says as her big doe eyes flicker up to his face.

“Hey?” she repeats, her voice cracking. “You die, come back, and all you have to say is ‘ _hey_?’”

“I’m… sorry?”

“Oh, come here, you big idiot,” she says, jumping out of her chair and encasing him in a bone-crushing hug. “God, in all that time you couldn’t have bothered to tell me you were a death-defying alien? You had me in pieces! I thought I lost my best friend!”

“I didn’t exactly know myself, here. But I’m sorry,” he says again, meaning it this time. “How are you?”

“Don’t ask me how I am, I should be asking you!”

“Martha pronounced me healthy and sent me on my way,” Ianto says with a small smile. “So I’m fine. How are you?”

“Oh, Ianto. I’m just glad you’re alive,” she says, hugging him again. He pats her back awkwardly and she somehow takes that as a sign to burrow in deeper into the embrace. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

“Hold on,” he says, wrenching himself from her grip. “The children. Weren’t we trying to save the children?”

Gwen’s face darkens, and he listens as she tells him what happened after Ianto seemingly died. Every new piece of information has his hearts twisting in cold anger and agony. Hearing about Steven is absolutely unbearable.

“Where is he?” Ianto asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Gwen says truthfully.

“Does he even know I’m alive?”

“I… don’t know,” she says again, this time without any of the truth.

Ianto sinks down into her plastic chair and realizes he was right. It is damned uncomfortable. He can’t think of anything else other than that, else his brain will fry and his hearts will break.

“We’ll find him,” Gwen says, placing a hand on his slumped shoulder.

He allows himself thirteen more seconds of despair before sitting up. He gives Gwen a tight, but reassuring smile and nods.

“Of course,” he says.

“Now,” Gwen says in a lighter tone, “what’s all this about your father not being a tailor?”

“Oh, shit.”

* * *

Three whole months pass. Well, three months, two days, fourteen hours, twelve minutes, and--

“We get it, you’re a Time Lord, stop counting the seconds!” Gwen snaps.

She’s a very angry pregnant lady, Ianto thinks. Rhys agrees.

“Yesterday she snapped at me for moving my shampoo to the ‘wrong side’ in the shower,” he hisses to Ianto. “Bloody terrifying, she is.”

“Maybe I should move out,” Ianto says slowly as Gwen stalks about in a fit of rage, now seething because of some misplaced book.

“No!”

“You’ll miss me that much?” he teases Rhys.

“Like hell I will,” Rhys snorts, but it’s in good fun.

They’ve become quite close in the past few months, bonding over beer, football, and pretty much everything else men are supposed to bond over. Ianto never thought he’d be that guy, but then again, he’s only twenty-six. He’s allowed to act like that. Right?

“This is about self-preservation,” Rhys continues. “The moment you leave, she’ll just get sadder and crankier, and then there’ll only be me to shout at! No thank you. You stay.”

“Would it kill you to put things in their rightful place?” Gwen shrieks. “Do either of you even know how to do simple organization?”

“No point in reminding her I was the archivist, is there?” Ianto asks Rhys.

Rhys shakes his head. “She’ll only get madder if you do.”

“Oi! I can hear you!”

The two men immediately go quiet, but Ianto could’ve sworn Rhys mutters something an awful lot like ‘even worse than my sister’ under his breath.

Ianto hasn’t seen his own sister in over three months, not since he met her at the park to take her laptop and car. Not the best way to end it, with a disagreement on their father and Ianto on the run, but she thinks he’s dead. She had a funeral for him before he woke up two days later. Rhys and Gwen had gone, three hours before they’d gotten the call from Martha that something ‘suspicious’ was happening to his body in the UNIT morgue. According to Gwen, lots of relatives had attended his funeral, but not much was said the entire time.

“A very quiet funeral for a very quiet man,” Gwen tells him on the ride to Cardiff. “Almost poetic.”

That’s not the reason why it was quiet, he knows, but he doesn’t tell her that.

“You think we could just hide until she’s too knackered to yell?” Rhys asks Ianto softly.

Ianto watches her find and snatch up missing book (coincidentally, where she left it). “Better do that, yeah.”

They end up hiding at a coffee shop. Ianto has no idea why; he assumed they’d just hide in the bedroom or something. He doesn’t mind, though. It’s nice to drink coffee that he didn’t have to make, for a change.

“You ever think about calling that physician bloke?” Rhys asks out of the blue.

“What?” Ianto asks, puzzled.

“Y’know. The other time-y whatsit. Time Lord.”

“The Doctor?”

“Yeah, him! Why haven’t you called him?”

“I don’t know,” Ianto admits after some consideration. “I just… haven’t had--”

“If you say you haven’t had the time, I’m going to dump your coffee over your head.”

Ianto’s fingers curl tighter around his cup. “I just didn’t think about it, that’s all. It’s been an odd few months.”

“I suppose it has,” Rhys says, shrugging and dropping the subject altogether.

That conversation doesn’t leave his head for a while. Two days, six hours, and twenty minutes later, he’s sitting on the sofa with Gwen sleeping on him, and he finds himself fiddling with his mobile. He counts Gwen’s snores. When she hits twenty, he’ll call.

Twenty snores come and go. He doesn’t call.

Twenty-five snores, and he still doesn’t call.

Thirty snores and no call.

Thirty-five. Forty. Nothing.

Forty-seven snores is when he finally gets frustrated enough to force himself to push the button. He puts the mobile to his ear and waits anxiously.

He doesn’t wait for long, because the other Time Lord picks up almost immediately.

“Listen, it’s nice that you’ve called and all, but you’ve got the wrong number. No, you can’t convince me otherwise. Goodbye!” is not what Ianto expects to hear. Maybe a hello. Or a “This is the Doctor.” But certainly not a rude, condescending introduction.

“Um, Doctor?” Ianto says hurriedly before the other man can hang up. “Martha said to call you.”

“…okay, maybe you’ve not got the wrong number. Who’s this?”

“Ianto Jones. Sir.” Ianto cringes. God, he’s never been inept with phone calls before, so why now?

There’s a pause before the Doctor responds again. “Jack’s boy?”

Well, Ianto has no idea how to reply to that. Jack’s boy? _Jack’s_ boy? Jack’s _boy_? Oh, god. There’s so many things wrong with that.

“Um. Well. I… suppose?”

“What’d he do this time?” the Doctor sighs.

“Nothing. I think.” Ianto frowns. “Look, this isn’t about Jack. This is about, well, me. Did you get any of Martha’s calls?”

“Aaaaahhhhhh….” That sounds like he did receive Martha’s calls, he’s just been ignoring them. Owen used to make similar sounds, except with a lot less guilt hidden in the tone. “Possibly? I’ve been busy. Very busy. Incredibly busy. So busy that I’ve…. got to go right now. See ya!”

“Wait!” Ianto shoots up, causing Gwen to fall over into the couch with an undignified yelp. She sits up, blinking at him, but Ianto doesn’t pay her any mind. “I’m a Time Lord!”

There’s a noise that sounds like a mobile dropping and a few alien words that could be expletives. A rustling follows as the mobile is picked up again.

“Sorry, could you just… could you just say that again, please?”

“I’m, um. I’m a Time Lord?”

“Right.” The Doctor’s tone is both believing and disbelieving at the same time.

“It’s true.”

“Right,” the Doctor repeats. A silence follows. Then: “Hold on a tic.”

The call drops, and Ianto pulls the mobile from his ear to stare at it.

“What was that about?” Gwen asks, all traces of sleep gone from her wide eyes.

“That was the Doctor,” Ianto says.

“Oh,” Gwen says. “Him.”

“Yes, him. And I don’t think he’s listened to a word Martha’s said, because he seems awfully surprised that-- Hello?” Ianto instantaneously picks up when his mobile starts to ring.

“Time Lord, you said?” the Doctor asks, now sounding intrigued and a fair bit excited.

“Time Lord,” Ianto confirms.

“That’s… brilliant,” the Doctor says. Ianto can practically hear his smile. “Absolutely fantastic. Hang on one moment.”

Ianto expects the Doctor to hang up on him again, but instead, a strange, whirring, groaning noise emanates from the other side of the call. Two point one seconds later, the strange, whirring, groaning noise is coming from the middle of Gwen’s living room as a blue police box materializes from nowhere.

As soon as the TARDIS becomes opaque and tangible, a man in a suit and… good god, are those trainers? Is he wearing red trainers with a blue suit? Ianto tries not to say anything about that as the man, the Doctor, rushes to him, scanning him with a long silvery thing.

“You weren’t lying,” the Doctor gushes, his grin wider than a hyena’s. “You’re really a Time Lord.”

Ianto ends the phone call, because it’s a bit unnecessary now. “That’s what I said.”

“Oh, but this is brilliant!” The Doctor runs a hand through his gravity-defying hair, then gestures to all of Ianto. “ _You’re_ brilliant! I mean, there I was, thinking I was the last one, but here you are! Ever since the paradox was destroyed, Martha says. And I missed you? How did I miss you? I should have seen it coming!”

The whirlwind of emotions is hard to follow, but now Ianto knows where Jack gets it from.

“Right,” Ianto says awkwardly.

“Um,” Gwen says, staring at the blue box.

“Oh!” The Doctor glances between her and the TARDIS. “Sorry! I suppose I should’ve said I was coming. Given you a heads-up and whatnot.”

“No, um…” Gwen shakes her head. “It’s fine. Just a bit… is it really bigger on the inside, or was Jack just making that up?”

The Doctor only laughs, leaving Gwen frowning and Ianto amused.

“Come on, then!” the Doctor cries unexpectedly. He grabs Ianto’s hand and drags him towards the TARDIS. “I’ll have him back in a month! No. Two! Hang on, three! Three months, tops, Gwen Cooper, then you’ll get him back, I promise!”

“It’s going to be longer than three months, isn’t it?” is the last thing Ianto hears from her before the door closes.

The bizarre noise starts again and Ianto can only stare around him as the Doctor effectively abducts him.

“Well?” the Doctor asks when that god-awful sound stops. “What do you think?”

“I think you’ve just kidnapped me,” Ianto says slowly.

“What? No. I haven’t kidnapped you! Not really. Have I? Noooo. I can’t have. I didn’t. I haven’t! Look, that’s not what I meant. I meant this!” He spreads his arms wide and gestures to everything around him.

“It’s… nice,” Ianto says.

“And?” the Doctor urges expectantly.

“It’s not blue.”

“And?” the Doctor repeats, grin fading.

“It’s cluttered,” Ianto says, noting the scattered sticky notes and equipment.

“And?” He sounds just plain vexed now.

Ianto flounders about his brain, trying to figure out what he’s expected to say. “I suppose the exterior _is_ smaller than the interior.”

The Doctor makes a tetchy noise and flips a switch on the console. “You’re impossible, Mr. Jones.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“No wonder Jack likes you.”

“About Jack--”

“I’ve got something to show you,” the Doctor says, apparently not hearing him.

He grabs Ianto by the elbow and drags him back to the doors of the TARDIS. He flings one open, and Ianto, expecting it to be another planet or something, instantly grabs hold of the other door as he realizes what’s outside.

“That’s…”

“Space, I know,” the Doctor says, his grin back. “Neat, isn’t it?”

“How the hell am I still breathing?” Ianto asks. “Shouldn’t all the air be sucked out into the vacuum of space?”

“Well. Shields and all that.” The Doctor pats the TARDIS affectionately.

Initial panic of being flung out into space assuaged, Ianto turns back to the view and takes it in.

For once, he doesn’t notice the passage of time. He couldn’t say how long he stands there for. It could be minutes, hours, days. Years. Lifetimes. He doesn’t care. All he can do is stare out into the heavens and witness in awe of its glory. Of its magnificence. Its splendor, its beauty, its majesty.

Thousands, millions, _billions_ of stars wait out there for him, he can feel it. He can feel everything.

And finally, his life is absolutely fine. Really, truly, honestly okay.

Perfect, even.

“All my life,” he says eventually.

The words come out thick and slow, and Ianto’s vaguely aware of tears on his cheeks. He pays no mind to any of it; he’ll have time to be embarrassed later. Now, he’s just too wonderstruck to care.

“All my life,” he tries again, “I’ve been waiting for this. I had no idea… I had no idea I was missing this.”

The Doctor says nothing, only reaching out to push the door shut. Ianto blinks when the view disappears. He turns to the Doctor.

“Just wait until you stare into the Time Vortex,” the Doctor murmurs.

“Will it be like that, too?”

“Like coming home?” the Doctor asks. He shakes his head. “Only you can say.”

“When can I see it?”

“Someday,” the Doctor says. “Just… not yet. Not so soon. You’re not ready.” He looks lost for a moment, then takes a huge breath in. “Besides, I don’t even know if I could find somewhere that’s full of pure, raw Time Vortex energy. Not like on Gallifrey, anyway.”

“Gallifrey?”

“That’s um…” The Doctor glances down to his feet and rubs the back of his neck. “That was my home. Our home. It’s gone now.”

“Gone?”

“Time War. With the Daleks. I had to…” He stops. “Point is, it’s gone.”

Ianto feels he has the right to hear more about his home planet than that, but it’s clearly something the Doctor can’t talk about. Like Jack and Martha with their year that never happened. Probably something even worse than that, judging by the expression on the Doctor’s face.

“Right. I suppose you’ve got questions, then,” the Doctor says quickly. “And even if you don’t, Martha does, so I’ve got to answer anyway. So go on, then, ask away.”

“Regenerating,” Ianto says.

“Yep.”

“I didn’t. I mean, I did, but I didn’t. I still look like me.”

“I can see that,” the Doctor says, his eyes examining Ianto head to toe.

Ianto waits for an explanation, but nothing seems to be coming. He sighs. “Can you tell me why?”

“Nope. ‘Fraid not.” The Doctor moves back towards his console and leans on it. “I’d say you were just too stubborn to truly regenerate, but that’s just a conjecture. I once partially regenerated, but that’s only because I diverted the energy into my severed hand. Then it grew into a whole person, so I’d say your way around it was better.”

“Christ,” Ianto says.

“Not exactly, no. Although I was almost crucified once.”

Ianto rolls his eyes, because that’s sounds exactly like something Jack would say.

“Jack.” Ianto says abruptly.

“What about him?” the Doctor asks, looking at him strangely.

“Do you know where he is?” Ianto asks. He holds no hopes, only because he doesn’t think he can handle being let down.

“No.”

“I figured,” Ianto says.

“Martha also says you don’t remember anything before the pocket watch,” the Doctor says.

Ianto frowns. “I remember before the pocket watch. Most of my life happened before that.”

“No, not that,” the Doctor says. “Of course you remember that. I remembered what happened to me when I was in mine.”

“What?” Ianto asks. In a pocket watch? That makes absolutely no sense. Then again, neither does time travel, or anything he’s seen since joining Torchwood, so perhaps he should just keep an open mind.

“You don’t even know what it is, do you?” the Doctor says sadly.

“No. Should I?”

The Doctor doesn’t reply. He merely straightens up and turns to the console, pressing a few buttons. He reads something on his monitor, and then turns around.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

The Doctor checks the monitor again. His face gets blanker and blanker, and when he gazes back at Ianto, Ianto can feel the timeless age of the man a thousand times stronger than he usually can. It’s almost sad.

“The pocket watch,” the Doctor says simply, “is us. It’s what we are, when we’re not us.”

“Okay.” Ianto tries to wrap his head around that. “Sorry, but what does that mean?”

“The Time Lords developed this machine. The chameleon arch. It can transform us into any species we need. When we do that--”

“The Time Lord gets put into the watch.”

“Very good!” the Doctor praises, some of the exuberance returning to him. “You are a clever one, Ianto Jones. Everything we are is stored in there: memories, feelings, our essence. All of it gone, until we open the watch again and return to ourselves.”

“So what does it mean that I didn’t get any of it back?” Ianto asks.

“Something. Probably. When did you feel the need to open it?”

Ianto is well-versed in this sort of avoidance. Jack was very fond of deflection himself. Ianto’s beginning to realize exactly who Jack takes after now.

“Right before I opened it, after your paradox reverted.”

“Ah.” The Doctor nods his head knowingly. “Big enough time disturbance. It’d make anyone want to come out of their shell.”

“I see.”

“Anything else you’ve got questions about?”

“The thing you scanned me with. What is it?”

The Doctor holds up the aforementioned object. “This thing?”

Ianto nods.

“Sonic screwdriver.” He flips it into the air and deftly catches it. “Works on everything but wood.”

Ianto doesn’t know what that means, because that doesn’t explain what it does at all.

“I’ve got one of those,” Ianto says. “In a box. With a key and that pocket watch.”

“Oh, brilliant! I don’t have to make you one. I can upgrade it, though.”

“I’ve already done that.”

The Doctor frowns. “You upgraded it without knowing what it was?”

Ianto shrugs.

“Oh, Ianto, I love you,” the Doctor says.

Ianto blinks. “Um. Thank you?”

The Doctor waves it off. “Don’t mention it. Now. Exploring! We’ve got to do some of that! What kind of Time Lord would you be, if you didn’t explore? Where do you want to start?”

“I…”

Ianto thinks it through. All those stars, with all their planets, sitting out there, waiting for him. And the Doctor wants him to choose one? Impossible. Unfeasible. Nonviable. Unthinkable.

“I had that same reaction when I first started,” the Doctor says, smiling fondly at Ianto. “Want me to choose?”

“Yes, please,” Ianto says, like some child that needs help tying their trainers.

“Barcelona’s always nice this time of year. The planet _and_ the city. So, easier choice: time or space?”

Ianto knows the answer to that one.

* * *

 Linearly, it’s been five years, twelve days, four hours and three seconds. Non-linearly, it’s been… who the hell knows? Ianto certainly doesn’t.

“You’ll begin to start getting a better feeling for of non-linear time later,” the Doctor informs him. “I’m surprised you latched on to linear time so quickly in the first place.”

“I’ve always been quick,” Ianto says with a shrug.

“Quicker than you think,” the Doctor says. “You’re bright, even for a Time Lord.”

“Bright enough that I can head out on my own?” Ianto asks slyly.

They’ve been dancing around this conversation for over a year now. The Doctor thinks Ianto should stay with him throughout all eternity. Not that he’d ever say that, but Ianto knows he wants it. Ianto just wants a taste of freedom. He loves travelling with the Doctor, of course; it’s absolutely (as the Doctor would say) _brilliant_. But every now and then, it kind of feels like he’s got a pesky chaperone. Or a clingy parent.

The Doctor gives him a searching glance, and Ianto fully expects another argument. To his surprise, the Doctor capitulates.

“I’ve shown you everything you need to know,” the Doctor sighs.

“So I can collect my own TARDIS now?”

“We’ll have to get your key,” the Doctor says. “And pick up your sonic while we’re at it.”

“It’s been over five years since I’ve left,” Ianto says. “I’ve got no idea where it would be by now.”

“Where and when’s the last place you were sure of it’s location?”

“Probably the few days before the 456 showed up, in the shoebox in my closet.” Ianto considers it further. “Then again, they probably raided my flat, so I can’t be sure. Best check it right after I left for work the morning the Hub blew up.”

“And that would be?”

“Six forty-five, on the dot.” It’s been years since he’s had to leave for work, but he still remembers as though it was just this morning.

“Best land at seven, just in case.”

When Ianto steps in his flat for the first time in over five years, it fills him with a longing he’s almost forgotten. The need to wake up every morning to get to work, the wish to explore alien life while still on Earth, the yearning to go to bed each night with Jack by his side. These things haven’t changed over the years, they’ve just been subtly different. Now, it all comes crashing back, threatening to overwhelm him.

“It’s always hard,” the Doctor says, somehow knowing what’s on Ianto’s mind. “Coming home is always the hardest part of travelling. It’s never the leaving that does you in. It’s returning.”

The Doctor gets that wistful look that means he’s thinking about Gallifrey again, so Ianto stays quiet and leaves to get the shoebox.

When he returns, the Doctor is rummaging through his refrigerator. Ianto places the shoebox down on the counter and put his hands on his hips, waiting for the Doctor to stop rooting around his kitchen.

“You’ve got too many eggs,” the Doctor says. “What were you going to make with all these? A souffle? And what’s with all this leftover takeaway? Did you eat anything healthy?”

“Can we get back on track, please?” Ianto asks, not really feeling in the mood to be shamed for his nonexistent nutrition.

“Right! Let’s see this sonic you’ve upgraded.”

The Doctor lifts the top off the shoebox and peers inside. Ianto can see the exact moment his face goes from excited to sad. It’s a minute difference with only the smallest of changes, but after five years and being very good at reading people, Ianto can see it. Especially when the Doctor reaches in and pulls out the blanket.

“What’s this?” he asks softly.

Ianto wants to make light of it, because it’s only a blanket, but it seems to make the Doctor sad. “I’m not sure. It’s just always been there.”

The Doctor stares at it more, until he shakes himself slightly and moves onward, forcing pep back into his voice. “Sonic! There it is. Oh, well, that’s lovely! Look at it! Marvelous, that is!”

He holds it up to the light and inspects it. Ianto watches him as he tests it on Ianto’s fridge. It hums loudly.

“Oh, Ianto, you genius. It’s wonderful! Here, take a look at your beautiful handiwork.”

He tosses it to Ianto, who catches it awkwardly. He looks down at it, and for the first time in his life, he actually notices things about it. Now that he knows what he’s supposed to be looking for, it’s almost as if he’s seeing it brand new.

“Shit,” he says, dumbfounded. “I did that.”

“And you had no idea what you were doing. Now imagine what it’d be like when you upgrade it again, with all your knowledge.”

“It’d be even better than yours.”

“Well,” the Doctor protests, “I wouldn’t say _better_ , per se. As good as, sure, but not better, no.”

“You’re just jealous,” Ianto says.

He points it at the fridge, putting an end to the obnoxious thrumming that it’s still emitting.

“Now, key,” the Doctor says, looking into the box again. “There’s that watch. Here, catch! And there’s the key. Oh, it’s so ordinary! Spectacular.”

“It’s just a key,” Ianto says, pocketing the watch.

“I know. Isn’t it fantastic?”

“You’re too easily amused by absolutely normal things.”

“When you’ve seen everything I have, you’ll find that even the most normal of things can hold more wonders than the things that aren’t normal at all.”

And with that, he ushers Ianto back into the TARDIS. Ianto doesn’t even get one last look around his flat before the door closes around him and they’re off again.

“So, now we just need to locate your TARDIS,” the Doctor says, shoving his glasses on his face and dashing towards the console.

Ianto watches him punch things into the console, his fingers flying a thousand times faster than usual. It’s undoubtedly the excitement of finding another TARDIS. Hell, if he was flying this TARDIS right now, he’d probably steer them into a black hole by accident.

“Hm. You must send me some coordinates in the future, because I’m getting something.” The Doctor peers over the rims of his glasses at Ianto. “Remember that.”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“It would seem to be, yes. So, looks like we’ll be heading to… Wales in the early eighties.”

“I was born in the early eighties,” Ianto muses. “Well, according to my parents. My human parents. Adoptive human parents.”

The Doctor gives him an imperceptible look, much like the one he had as he held the blanket. It’s gone in a moment, replaced by eagerness.

“Right. So, the question is: dress like eighties? Or just quickly find your TARDIS, hop in, and go?”

“Eighties is not my style,” Ianto says swiftly.

“It’s really not,” the Doctor agrees. “So! Let’s find you a TARDIS!”

When they land, Ianto blinks. It’s afternoon, and they’re in a car park by a hospital. And there’s not a TARDIS to be found, save for the one they’re already in.

“It’s cloaked,” the Doctor whispers in awe. “Yours is cloaked! The chameleon circuit must be working!”

“We could fix yours,” Ianto adds.

The Doctor throws him a scandalized look.

“Or not,” Ianto says as the Doctor takes off, waving his sonic screwdriver around at the cars like a madman.

Ianto follows after him down the rows of cars and trucks, wondering why it was placed here. Then he remembers that this was the hospital where he was supposedly born. Then again, for all he knows, he was actually born here. Maybe his human parents had actually been Time Lords, too, hidden by the chameleon arch. The Doctor had agreed it was a possibility.

“It’s, what, late November of ‘83? Must’ve been sitting here a few months. Wonder why nobody noticed a car that never left?”

The Doctor’s is stony, but he says with a light tone: “Humans don’t notice things like that. Why would you notice an ever-present car when you could be thinking about money?”

Ianto feels the need to defend the human race; after all, he did think he was one of them for nearly twenty-five years. He doesn’t get a chance to say anything, though, because the Doctor cries out with transparent glee.

“Ah! Here it is!”

The Doctor stops beside a typical-looking grey car. It’s got no discernable brand, and the plate reads ‘TARDIS.’

“You really needed your screwdriver for that?” Ianto asks.

“Cheeky,” the Doctor says warningly.

He opens the car door and slides into the passenger seat. Ianto wonders how odd that must look from the inside. Is he entering in a squatting position? Curious, Ianto follows after him.

The answer is yes, and it’s very awkward. He’s never letting this TARDIS appear as a car ever again.

All thoughts of exterior design are immediately put aside, replaced by thoughts of interior design. It looks nothing like the Doctor’s TARDIS. Well, it does, to a basic degree, with a circular console in the center and weird, circle things adorning the walls. But this one doesn’t cast an orangey glow. If anything, it’s got too much grey. Hideous grey, like the kind people look at on houses and then remark that they’d repaint that, if they were the owners of said house. And the ramps and walkways on this TARDIS are cleaner than the Doctor’s TARDIS. Smoother, classier. Pristine. The rest of it is pleasant enough, so he supposes he won’t do too much redecorating, but as soon as he can, that horrendous grey gets repainted.

The Doctor’s already banging away at the console, which seems to still be running. Must have a decent power supply, to keep running for three months without use.

“There!” the Doctor says with a grandiose flourish at the keys. “Self-fulfilling prophecy: fulfilled! Don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Can we change the exterior?” Ianto asks.

The Doctor grins. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Don’t get it stuck!”

“I won’t! Probably!”

Ten minutes and three arguments later, they step outside to stare at the red telephone box.

“I hate you,” Ianto grumbles.

“I think it’s brilliant!” the Doctor declares. “We match! Isn’t that fun?”

“Don’t even think about touching my parking brakes.”

The Doctor makes an evasive noise, and Ianto takes a deep breath to keep himself from attacking the other man.

“I’m going to fix the interior now,” Ianto says. “Coming?”

“In a moment,” the Doctor says. “I’ve got something I need to check out, first.”

Ianto watches him turn around and start walking back to his own TARDIS. He frowns, wondering why this sudden dark mood is hanging over the Doctor like a cloud. But the Doctor’s disappeared behind cars now, so Ianto heads inside the new TARDIS, ready to start adjustments.

As he starts attacking the system, he hears the groaning noise twice, the second time merely six seconds after the first. Then the Doctor pokes his head inside this TARDIS and joins him near the console.

“Are you alright?” Ianto asks, noting the severe look on the Doctor’s face.

“Perfectly alright,” the Doctor says. “No grey, you said?”

If Ianto has any more questions, they’re instantly forgotten as they start working on making this new TARDIS of his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, and have an incredible weekend!


	3. Intermission

It is a night like any other in Cardiff. Thin clouds blanket the sky, the moon barely peeking through and the stars nowhere to be found. A dog howls in the distance, causing another to bark back in response. The rest of the city is quiet, though, as if holding its breath. There’s any number of reasons it could be, but act in particular stands out tonight.

Two figures stand out in stark contrast to the harsh light of a hospital. One of the figures is pacing, back and forth, back and forth, wracked with some inner conflict. The second figure is hardly paying attention to the first, merely staring down at a swaddled mass in her arms.

“He’s too young,” the man hisses. “Far, far too young. Barely a few months! You can’t put him through this-- it’ll kill him!”

“I’ve already done it,” the woman murmurs, not lifting her gaze from the child.

“What?” the man asks sharply.

A glint of metal flashes in response, the horrid yellow lights reflecting off the surface of the pocket watch as the man snatches it from the woman. The man is silent for a moment as he flips it over in his hands, once, twice, thrice, as if it would change with every new turn, like it would somehow make it change back to a normal pocket watch.

“He’s too young,” he repeats. This time there is a plea hidden in his tone.

“What’s done is done,” replies the woman, though she sounds equally distraught. “He’s human. We’ve got to finish this.”

“It won’t work.”

She adjusts the blanket around the sleeping baby’s face. “Yes, it will.”

“No, it won’t! You can’t just switch a baby out for him! The parents will be able to tell!”

“Stop doubting me,” she snaps softly. “They won’t know the difference. He looks close enough to the other child. Even if he didn’t, I hardly doubt the parents will care. That boy won’t survive the night. It’ll be like a miracle to find a healthy baby in his place the next morning.”

“I’m certain they’d rather grieve their own child than readily accept another without questioning. You think too little of humans if you think they won’t.”

“And you think too much of them. You’re just like the Doctor.”

“Don’t compare me to him! Don’t even talk about him. He’s the reason we’re doing this!”

The child in the woman’s arms starts to squirm, and the woman shushes him, rocking him gently in her arms. The man loses his bluster again, wringing his hands together.

“This won’t work.”

She doesn’t reply. Pressing a kiss to the baby’s head, she frees a hand and holds it out to the man. A thin, silver instrument slides into her outstretched palm, and she closes her hands around it. The man resists letting go of the object for a moment, a silent protest, but eventually gives in and lets go of the device and the argument.

“Who’s he to become, then?” the man whispers.

The woman choses to ignore him again at first, instead sliding the pocket watch, device, and a key into the folds of the child’s blanket. She plants another kiss onto the boy’s forehead, longer and fiercer than the last, trying to push all the love and care of a mother into the action. The man waits, expecting an answer. After nearly half a minute, he steps forward and puts his arms around the woman and the child. The three of them stand there, looking as normal as one can whilst huddling in the middle of a hospital car park in the dead of night.

Eventually the woman breaks free from the man’s hold as she starts forward towards the hospital doors. The man watches her go, face flooded with sorrow that shallows out his face in the hospital lights. The woman stops before she opens the doors and turns back to face him, her own face impassive and calm.

“Ianto Jones.”

As they enter the hospital, neither of them notices the brown-coated man in the distance turn to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to sound like a broken record, but thank you for reading, and please enjoy your day!


	4. Decidedly Not the End

Ianto stops running as he realizes that right now, at this very instant, he’s been gone from Earth exactly ten years. Ten whole years. That’s roughly five eighteenths of his life. And he hasn’t felt small for any of that time. In fact, he’s felt--

“Don’t stop!” the Doctor yells. “Keep going!”

He’s felt happy, he decides as he runs. He’s felt absolutely, wholly, utterly happy.

But he’s still not on his own, even five years after they’d decided he would go off alone.

Then again, he’s being chased by a giant Heglaboo right now, so he can think about it later.

‘Later’ comes around in another five hours and twenty-two seconds, as they lounge in hammocks strung between the two TARDISes.

“Doctor?” Ianto asks.

“Yes, Ianto?” the Doctor replies distractedly, staring intently at a scratch on his glasses.

“I’m going back to Earth.”

“Oh? What year?”

“2010.”

The Doctor turns sharply to him.

“Three months after we left,” Ianto continues.

“You’re leaving?” the Doctor asks.

“It’s been long enough,” Ianto says. “And I miss Gwen. And I suppose Rhys. And Jack. I miss Jack. I’ve got to find him, Doctor.”

“I can find you Jack,” the Doctor says, almost pleadingly. “You don’t have to go.”

“But I do,” Ianto says simply. “This has been the most amazing part of my life, but I want the others in it. My friends. Jack. I need them, too.”

“I know.”

They sit a while longer in the hammocks, reveling in their last hours together. It feels bittersweet for some reason, but Ianto can’t place a finger on why. It’s not like it’s their last travelling with each other, much less seeing each other. Still, the Doctor hugs him tighter and longer than it feels necessary, and part of Ianto wishes he’d never let go. But only a small part.

Four hours later, one red TARDIS lands in Gwen Cooper’s living room.

“Oh, fancy,” Ianto hears through the door, making him laugh.

“Three months on the dot,” Gwen says as he steps out. She envelops him in a hug. “Oh, god, even that’s been too long.”

“Wow,” Ianto says, holding her out and looking down at her very pregnant body.

“I know. I’m bigger than that bloody space whale.” She suddenly gets quiet. “Sorry. That’s not something to joke about.”

“It’s okay.”

She hugs him again, as tight as she can with her swollen stomach. “Have you missed us?”

“You’ve no idea,” Ianto says.

“How long’s it been for you?”

“Ten years, nine hours--”

“We were fine with ten years,” Rhys says, joining them in the living room. “Red, huh? Better than that blue.”

“Much better,” Gwen agrees. “It’s more modern.”

“And stuck like that,” Ianto says, pulling a face. “No matter how hard I try, I can’t fix it.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad. I’m sure you’ll figure it out sometime,” Gwen says soothingly. “But not right now. Right now, I want to hear everything about your trip.”

Ianto has as much fun telling them about his adventures as he did during the adventures themselves. It’s so much fun to watch them imagine exactly what he’s been up to. No wonder the Doctor gets such a kick out of telling stories. And Jack.

Thinking about Jack hurts, now. It’s probably because he’s back on Earth in the right time, like back when he returned to his flat.

“Have you found Jack?” Ianto asks over his third glass of shitty wine.

Gwen and Rhys share a look.

“He… contacted me,” Gwen says measuredly.

“What did he say?”

“Just the normal things.” She’s silent for a moment, then blurts out: “Ianto, I think he’s leaving. Earth, I mean.”

“Why do you think that?” Ianto asks, his hearts thudding all wrong.

“He asked for his wrist strap,” Gwen says.

“Vortex manipulator,” Ianto corrects, without thinking about it. “Cheap and nasty.”

Gwen blinks at him.

“Sorry. Habit I’ve picked up,” he says sheepishly.

“You’ve picked up a few things from the Doctor,” Gwen says. She smiles. “You’re… oh, I dunno. Happier, I guess. It’s nice.”

“It feels nice,” Ianto admits. “But I need to find Jack.”

“I know, sweetheart,” she says, patting his hand.

“We’re taking the wrist vortex manipulator thingy to him,” Rhys informs Ianto, “so he can pay me fifty quid for the new strap.”

“We’re obviously not going to let him use it,” Gwen says quickly. “Not now. We’ll just convince him to stay.”

“Or maybe I could convince you to go,” Ianto says.

The two gawp at him.

“Ianto,” Gwen says, her tone gentle, as if she were speaking to an idiot, “I’m pregnant.”

“So?”

“I’ve got to watch after the baby!” Gwen exclaims. “I can’t gallivant through the universe like, I don’t know, a circus show, or something!”

Ianto inwardly winces as he remembers the Night Travellers. He doubts it was Gwen’s intention to bring that up, but it’s not impossible. It’s certainly fresher in her memory than his.

“It won’t be like that,” he assures them. “Just come with me. Please.”

Gwen and Rhys sit in private silence for a bit before passing looks between each other. It turns into a rather heated silent argument, and Ianto’s not sure who’s on what side. Ianto’s not sure they know who’s on what side. It ends when Gwen scowls so deeply he’s afraid her face will stick that way until the ends of time.

She huffs. “Is this what you people do? Steal them away from their perfectly ordinary lives and force them on some never-ending trip?”

“Gwen, tell me honestly that you don’t want this, and I’ll drop it.”

She stares at him for a moment, then sighs. “Damn it.”

“There’s no way you would’ve said no,” Rhys says. “I wouldn’t have let you.”

“You want to travel, Rhys Williams?” Gwen asks, sounding shocked.

“Well, I can’t turn down all of time and space, now, can I? Think of all the bets I could make! God, Gwennie, it’d be spectacular!”

“That’s not how this works,” Ianto reminds him.

“Oh, I know, I know. Just let a man dream, yeah?”

Gwen snorts and takes Rhys’s hand. She turns to Ianto, suddenly sombre.

“He’s coming in two days,” she says. “We’re to meet him on some stupid hill in the middle of the night.”

“Jack bloody Harkness,” Rhys mutters darkly under his breath.

Two days pass by rather fast in hindsight. At the time, it feels like forever, because they’re moving half of Gwen and Rhys’s life into Ianto’s TARDIS. More than half, based on how many photo albums Gwen packs up to take along. And the whole time, they constantly ask him questions.

“So, what’s the Doctor’s real name? Jack never said.”

“I dunno. He doesn’t say. That’s their thing, the Time Lords.”

“Don’t you mean _your_ thing?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, what’s your Time Lord name?”

“Ianto Jones.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s as good a name as any. I think it’s nice.”

“Oh, it’s a perfectly fine name. I just thought you’d choose something cooler for your Time Lord name. If you had to choose something like that, what would it be?”

“I don’t know. Owen would probably say ‘the Teaboy.’”

“This isn’t about Owen. What do _you_ think? I think ‘the Archivist’ suits you. Or maybe ‘the Librarian.’”

“I’m not a librarian.”

“Is the Doctor an actual doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Of what?”

Ianto sighs, wanting for all the world for these two days to end sooner.

But when he lands his TARDIS at the base of the designated hill, he wishes they dragged on a bit longer. It’s been ten years since he’s seen Jack. Ten whole years, and he’s got butterflies in his stomach like a little girl.

“Oh, it’s silent,” Gwen says. “Not like the blue one.”

“That’s because every time the Doctor came near my parking brakes, my TARDIS zapped him,” Ianto says, applying said brakes. He drops his hands to his sides and turns to the couple. “Well, then. First travel through space. How’d you like it?”

“We didn’t travel through space,” Rhys retorts. “We barely travelled outside of Cardiff!”

“We moved from place to place. Hence, travelling through space. Not outer space, but still. Space.”

“It was a bit bumpy,” Gwen says, answering his original prompt. “Not by much, but I swear to god, if I’m in labour, this thing better not move an inch.”

“I promise not to fly when you give birth.”

“Good. Let’s go get your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my--”

“Jesus Christ, Ianto, everyone knows how the two of you are. He’s your boyfriend, now shut up and get over it.”

Gwen and Ianto stare at Rhys. He shrugs.

“It’s just bollocks, that’s all I’m saying,” he says.

“Right,” Gwen says. She gives him another odd look before taking his hand and stepping outside the TARDIS. She immediately groans. “You couldn’t’ve parked it up a little higher?”

“Sorry. Miscalculated by a few… well, it doesn’t translate to English very well,” Ianto explains.

“Oh, bilingual now, are we?”

“Multilingual.”

“How many?” she asks.

“Um.” He tries to run through all of the languages and dialects he knows.

“That many?” Rhys asks when he fails to produce a number. “You’ve only been gone ten years!”

Ianto doesn’t comment, merely continuing to tread up the hill. When they near the top, Gwen stops him with her hand. He shoots her a quizzical glance, but she shakes her head.

“Let me soften the blow,” she murmurs.

Rhys pats him kindly on the shoulder as he lets the two of them finish the climb on their own. He listens to Gwen make some comment about picking a better spot, trying to prepare himself for whatever comes next. He’s rather unsuccessful, as evident by the way his hearts do a fucked-up tango when he hears Jack speak for the first time in a decade. He’s torn between wanting to smack Jack for the snide jibe for the behalf of Wales and wanting to rush up the hill and kiss him.

“The whole world is like a graveyard,” he hears Jack say, and it breaks his hearts.

 “Jack,” Gwen says, so softly he can barely hear her.

“What?”

“Listen to me for just a moment, alright?”

“I’m leaving. You can’t change my mind.”

“It’s not about that, although I’m sure I can. Well, I won’t, but that’s besides the point.”

“Gwen, what is it?” Jack asks wearily.

“He’s… he’s real, okay? I promise it’s not an illusion, and it’s certainly not a trick. You got that, Jack Harkness?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jack asks, just as Ianto decides that’s his cue.

He steadies himself, bracing for the inevitable rush of emotion, and climbs up the rest of the hill.

God, he’s gorgeous. Handsome, striking, attractive. Ten years of unequivocal beauty, and none of it can compare to Captain Jack Harkness. His hearts don’t speed up or slow down or do a funky beat or anything. Instead, they settle down to natural rhythm, the way they always do when he’s around Jack. It feels more like coming home than stepping in his old flat or staying with Gwen and Rhys. It’s absolutely perfect.

Jack catches sight of him and immediately shuts down. He merely says “no” and shakes his head slowly, clearly refusing to believe it.

“Hello, Jack,” Ianto says, because ten years is not enough to make him a smooth talker. God, a million years probably couldn’t do that; he’ll just have to wait and see.

“No,” Jack repeats, taking a few staggering steps backwards.

“Jack, remember what I said,” Gwen says. “He’s real. That’s Ianto.”

“No,” Jack growls this time. “He’s dead.”

“Decidedly not, no,” Ianto says. “Hearts still beating and all.”

Jack stares at him for moments longer before starting to move slowly towards him. Ianto decides not to take any steps closer, afraid he’d spook Jack off like a wild animal. He lets Jack come to him in his own time, letting him make the decision whether to believe Ianto is real or not all on his own.

Eventually Jack reaches him, standing a hairsbreadth away. Ianto can feel his breath, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from pulling Jack in and snogging the daylights out of him. What is he, a horny teenager? He keeps it together long enough for Jack to reach a hand up to his cheek.

“Ianto?”

“I’m afraid so,” Ianto says. He gives Jack that soft smile that only Jack ever sees.

“Oh, god,” Jack says, his voice breaking.

Suddenly, Ianto is being yanked into the tightest hug he’s ever had in his thirty-six years of life, and Jack is sobbing into his shoulder. This isn’t really what Ianto had planned for a reunion. Maybe a few witty comments and a few teasing innuendos, but certainly not this. This is honest-to-god _grief_. He’s here, in Jack’s arms, and Jack is still grieving for him. It hurts so much, and Ianto just holds him.

Ianto doesn’t count the time it takes for Jack to regain control of himself. This is personal, and personal things don’t ever have set times. But Ianto knows it’s a while before Jack pulls back and presses the gentlest of kisses to Ianto’s lips.

“Don’t leave me again,” Jack pleads quietly.

“I don’t plan on it,” Ianto whispers. “See, I’ve got something important I need to tell you.”

Jack draws back and gives a watery laugh. “Only you can come back from the dead and say there’s something more you need to tell me.”

Ianto raises an eyebrow. “What if I promise you’ll like it?”

“Can I get five more minutes to just wrap my head around the fact that you’re here?”

“God, no!” Gwen exclaims from somewhere behind them. “My feet! I need to sit down.”

“Seconded,” Rhys chimes in.

“Looks like you’re overruled, sir,” Ianto says.

Jack visibly shudders. “Oooh, six months without any of that and you start out strong. You’re a cruel man, Ianto Jones.”

“Mmm. I’ll show you just how cruel later.”

“Oi, none of that!” Gwen says. She steps forward and begins to shove them down the hill. “I’m sitting down, even if it kills me.”

Jack and Ianto shake free of Gwen as they start down the hill. Jack surprises Ianto by taking his hand and holding it firm. Ianto draws in closer, so that they’re nearly shoulder to shoulder. Jack may have thought him dead, but Ianto’s been gone for ten years.

“There’s a phone booth,” Jack says stupidly, coming to a halt. “Could someone tell me why there’s a phone booth at the bottom of this hill?”

“It’s not a bloody phone booth, you idiot,” Gwen says.

“Ignore her, she’s cranky,” Rhys says as the two of them brush past Jack and Ianto.

“How is it not a phone booth?” Jack asks.

Ianto says nothing in return, only standing back to watch Jack’s expression as he observes both Gwen and Rhys entering it. It takes four point one two one four three seconds for recognition to dawn on Jack’s face, closely followed by disbelief, awe, and astonishment.

“I should’ve seen it,” Jack mumbles. “The pocket watch and the tests… God, I really am an idiot, aren’t I?”

“Would you like to see my TARDIS?” Ianto asks.

“Yeah… yeah, I would,” Jack says.

They’re about to enter it when Jack stops him.

“Wait, how long have you been gone?” Jack asks.

“Ten years.”

Jack frowns. “You waited that long to tell me you weren’t dead? I mean, I don’t expect much, but after what happened, it would’ve been nice to hear something.”

“I was with the Doctor,” Ianto says, knowing Jack would understand.

“Oh.”

“Had to learn how to be a Time Lord.”

“Right.”

“I would’ve come back sooner, really,” Ianto tells him. “I just--”

“No, I get it. He’s like that.” He gives Ianto a half-smile. “I suppose it’s payback for all those months I left you guys alone.”

“Then I guess it’s my turn to offer you a date. How does champagne in the rings of Saturn sound?”

“Better than dinner and a movie,” Jack chuckles.

They step into Ianto’s TARDIS and Jack lets out a low whistle.

“Nice,” he says.

“Good enough to call home?”

“Why, Mr. Jones,” Jack teases, “are you asking me to move in with you?”

“Well, Gwen and Rhys have already staked their claim, so I figured it’d only be fair to let you in, too.”

“I’m wounded,” Jack says, placing a hand over his heart.

“I’m sure. Now. Where to first?"

"You promised us Mars!" Rhys yells.

"Mars is horrible this time of year," Ianto says.

"You've got a bleedin' time machine!"

"Right. So one vote for Mars..."

"Wherever Jack was born!"

"Not there," Jack says quickly, glaring at Gwen.

"Okay, that's it. We're going to Beta Cephei." 

(Needless to say, Ianto Jones's life isn't so small anymore.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got away from me a bit, and I apologise for this.  
> Have a great day, and thank you for keeping up with the story!


	5. Epilogue

Ianto should have seen this coming. Jack had been making comments not so long ago. Things like ‘you should style your hair different’ or ‘you should grow a beard.’ Jack probably jinxed it, with his need for change. Ianto is sure Jack never meant it that way, but it does sour things a bit at the moment.

Not that it matters now, of course. It’s too late to wonder if the universe had been forewarning him of what was to come, because he’s currently living it now. Well, more like he’s dying it now, but that doesn’t make much sense, now, does it?

"Damn it," he says, peering down at the suit. It had always been one of his favourites. It's just as much a goner as he is. 

"They're starting to fall back!" Jack yells from further along the barricade. 

"Oh, _now_ they do!" Ianto shouts. His sarcasm loses its potency through the din.

"We'll be back by--" 

Jack cuts off as a blast shoots past his head. It singes his hair, and Ianto can smell it from all the way over here. Not pleasant one bit. Jack fires his weapon twice into the distance, and Ianto focuses on keeping some blood and his innards inside himself. That's even less pleasant than burnt hair. Well, obviously. Obviously, it's less pleasant than burnt hair. He's losing it a bit, isn't he? 

Some time passes before he stops hearing phaser blasts and screaming. He doesn't know the exact time, but that's to be expected, because he's determined that he is, in fact, losing it. He braces his back against the barricade and pushes himself into a standing position. The pain almost causes him to black out, but he blinks hard and tries to keep himself in an upwards position. Taking a deep breath, he makes a single step towards Jack. 

"Ianto!" It's practically a scream that tears from Jack.

"Jesus Christ," Ianto says weakly, stumbling two more steps forward, "that hurts."

Jack's arms clamp around him as he pitches forward, easing him gently to the ground. 

"You think?" Jack asks. He's clearly aiming for a facetious tone, but it falls short. 

"Yes, I rather do." Ianto, on the other hand, has been nailing facetious since birth, and can absolutely continue to nail it on his deathbed. "I'm the one it's hurting, after all."

Jack laughs feebly. "God, Ianto."

"Two hundred seven," Ianto muses, biting back a yelp of pain as Jack pulls him further into his lap. "Not a bad age, huh?"

"No," Jack says. "Not a bad age at all."

"This suit's a mess. I'm going to have a hell of a time cleaning it after I regenerate."

"Is that all you can think about right now?"

"Well," Ianto says, "if I think about anything else, then I'll start wondering if I will even _like_ suits after I regenerate."

"Of course, you'll love suits!" Jack says quickly, inadvertently jostling Ianto in his arms, and Ianto hisses out in agony. "Sorry, sorry. But you're Ianto Jones! And Ianto Jones loves suits."

"But that's just it," Ianto says. "Will I even be Ianto anymore? I'm going to change, Jack. Not just my face. I'm going to be a whole different person. Maybe one who hates suits, and loathes coffee, and can only listen to heavy metal."

Jack lets out a huff. "You enjoying heavy metal. I'd like to see that."

"Wait a few hours, and you might get to."

They go quiet, both of them wondering what the future has in stock for them. Jack looks mildly concerned, no doubt reliving those moments when he realized his Doctor had changed on him. Ianto's fears run deeper than that, and there's only one idea that keeps running through his mind.

"Jack?" he asks softly.

"What is it?"

"What if I change too much?" Ianto asks. "What if I don't love you anymore?"

Jack tightens his hold on Ianto, and even through the inexplicable pain that action brings to Ianto, he still finds solace in it. 

"Then we'll work through it," Jack murmurs gently. He suddenly grins. "Wormed my way into your hearts once, so who's to say I can't do it again?"

Ianto laughs, and then groans.

"Oh, god," he breathes, "I think it's starting."

Jack slides Ianto carefully off his lap and onto the ground. It's cold and wet down there, and mud mixes with blood on Ianto's suit, but who the hell cares? He's going to regenerate anyways. In probably four point two three seconds. 

Jack presses a quick, tender kiss to Ianto's lips. "Good luck."

And the world turns gold.

* * *

 Ianto groans and shifts. Oh, he's in bed, then. That's awfully nice. 

He passes out again.

* * *

"Hello?" a voice calls teasingly. "You going to stay awake this time?"

Ianto heaves a tremendous sigh and cracks his eyes open.

Jack's sitting on the foot of his bed and grinning cheekily at him.

"Still love me?" Jack asks, smile getting unfathomably wider.

Ianto glares at him. "Shut up, I was dying. I think I'm allowed to be a bit dramatic."

"A bit?" Jack teases.

"I swear to god, Jack, I will dangle you out of the TARDIS by your ankles."

Jack is still beaming like a madman at him, but it starts to morph from cocky into a mixture of fond and excited. 

"Well," Ianto says. "How do I look?"

Nope, spoke too soon. It's back to that shit-eating grin, accompanied with a _you're-not-going-to-believe-this_ look. Ianto tenses slightly, worried about what Jack is going to say. Which is nothing, apparently, because Jack opts to merely hand him a mirror. Ianto takes a deep breath before bringing it to his face.

"Oh, come on!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it, folks! Hope you've enjoyed it! Thank you all for reading, and have an extraordinary week!


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